Hugh Jackman is Sleeping. (And Other X-Men Memories)

Shhhhhh. It's a day of rest and Hugh Jackman is sleeping. Let him be.


Wait. Anna!? What are you doing?!? Don't tiptoe up to deadly people while they're having nightmares.


AakHHGGGgghHNnnHhh! ouch

Well, don't say we didn't warn you. Anna Paquin is always hovering carelessly around killers, isn't she? Whether they be clawed or fanged. The girl can't help it.

The X-Men movie franchise was launched 10 years ago in July 2000 and I watched it again last week with the intention of celebrating it with lots of prurient screencaps of Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn and some discussion about the casting for X-Men: First Class (2011) aka Muppet Mutant Babies or "it's time for yet another reboot" but the time got away from me, it did. But better late than never for a couple of observations.

In some ways the original X-Men is a tentative mediocre movie: the budget limitations are obvious, Halle Berry is as lost as you remembered (though Storm is a strangely minor character), and the central evil plot is just dumb. But in other ways it's undervalued.

It makes smart choices about narrowing its focus for a first film (centering on Wolverine & Rogue) and the one character it totally reimagines -- that'd be Mystique -- is a major success.


What's more director Bryan Singer actually makes use of the widescreen in his mise-en-scène sometimes. Too few filmmakers do, just shoving everything into the center of the frame or shooting everything in relentless close-up. Even action sequences are shot with a preference for close-ups these days (see Inception for an up-to-the-minute example) but, much like musical numbers, they're more memorable and coherent when they include whole bodies in the frame.
And even if some of Singer's tricks get a bit repetitive, such as the out of focus introduction of characters in the background, they're aesthetically pleasing.

X-Men was lensed by Newton Thomas Sigel, who is Singer's constant collaborator. This is my favorite shot in the whole movie, Wolverine lost in the X-Mansion, bewildered by the new sites.


Isn't that a beauty narratively speaking? And Jackmanically speaking?

P.S. The Film Experience will be back tomorrow with Craig's Take Three column. I'll personally be scarcer than usual in the next week (off-web deadlines) but there will still be daily postings. We'll figure it out. We just keep putting it out there even though we don't have the recuperative powers of Logan/Wolverine. We sure could use them.

I Want to Link to There

Your Internet Movie Rule: Robert De Niro is...
Sunset Gun Kim Morgan talks to Tarantino
<--- Empire what film will director Bryan Singer do next? I'm just going to admit it: I don't really get his career. It seems so directionless despite a collection of generally good films
MNPP Michael Fassbender Four Times (he's fast becoming someone I totally care about!)
A Blog Next Door with a surprise observation about Adaptation (2002)
Coffee Coffee and More Coffee on the import/export game, the shrinking market for foreign films and how Hollywood doesn't play fair
INF "Aniston: Zellweger Stole My Man" I've never made a secret that I'm not a fan of Jennifer Aniston and her trademark 'abandoned woman' victimhood. On the other hand, I think all tabloids, celeb mags and gossip blogs ought to pay her tithing each year, you know?
If Charlie Parker... frames within frames. Lovely


Did you see The Wolf Man trailer? Benicio Del Toro plays the fuzzy wuzzy. I'm so pleased to see Hugo Weaving again (see previous post) but was it really a good idea to cast Anthony Hopkins in this? Seems like the choice is too obvious, too directly reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).



Topless Robot expresses what I suspect will be widespread feelings about this film before it opens. Poor lycanthropes. They never get any respect when it comes to monster movies. It's gotta be vampires, don't it?

Trailer of the Valkyrie

JA from MNPP here, popping my head back into these parts to direct y'all over to Yahoo! where they've got the trailer for Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, in case you haven't lain your eyes upon it quite yet. Or... maybe you don't give a crap. I've heard a lot of that. Snark here, snark there, everywhere a snark snark. And I've certainly had my... doubts. Which is why I'm pretending that Valkyrie will really be something closer to this:

A love story for the ages between Thomas Kretschmann (swoon) and Carice van Houten (double swoon)! Now that's something I could unequivocally get behind... or in the middle of... where ever...

I sometimes think I'm the only person who saw Tropic Thunder and didn't think Tom Cruise was funny (at all; Mcconaughey either dammit) so I'm not quite sure I'm gonna be able to deal with Tom Cruise... like, ever again. Which... well, that concerns me when it comes to whether I will like this movie or not since, in reality (and not the fake Kretschmann/van Houten movie I'm playing in my deranged head) Cruise is in like 90% of the shots in that trailer. He's gonna be present, ya know? Other faces that give me hope do pop up - Pleasure to see you, Tom Wilkinson! Looking good, Bill Nighy! - but I've some very real, very deep soul searching to stumble through before I sit down to the task at hand, it seems.

Or, ya know, I could just shut the hell up, realize it's just a damn movie, and behave like a sane person. Whatevs!
.

a lump of coal in your stocking?

As you have undoubtedly heard, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, once meant to be a 2008 film, has abandoned its 2009 release date to debut around Christmas after all. 2008 here it comes!

Does this mean Santa thinks we've been bad? Early buzz suggests that this is a lump of coal. But then again... maybe not. Singer has gift wrapped some real choice goodies in the past.


The Nazi era flick stars everyone's favorite looney cult member and a red hot Dutch diva who happens to look exactly like Charlotte Gray Blanchett in this photo, don't you think?
*

Lois Lane. Lost in Translation

Though I enjoyed Superman Returns (and hopefully there'll be a review to come) I think one of its principal deficiencies is in its reimagining of Lois Lane. Otherwise in this film you'll find an unmistakable reverence for previous incarnations of its characters, particularly the Man of Steel himself. Superman has been away five years according to the plot but he's barely changed at all. He's still old-fashioned, heroic, and pure of heart. Bryan Singer and Co. weren't trying to update him for what's fashionable for heroes today: no sudden dark side emerges a la popular comic-to-movie heroes like Batman and Wolverine. So why then the new and quite changed Lois?


In the drawing above from an early Superman comicbook you might notice that Lois resembles a certain queen of screwball. She's like a 2D Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. The great thing about Lois Lane was that she was in a very modern sense, Superman's equal. (Even a previous tv version was wise to this calling the series "Lois & Clark") Or, more specifically, and to great comic effect: she absolutely believed that she was. One of her most endearing traits is that though she is narratively always the classic "damsel in distress", it's the last persona she'd ever picture for herself.

Which is why it's so hilarious and perfect in the first couple of Supermans that Margot Kidder is gritty, odd, gutsy and weirdly sexy/disarming. Take the classic oft-quoted exchange when Superman catches Lois falling from a building:

Superman: "I've got you."
Lois: "You've got me. Who's got you?"

That is Lois Lane. A little funny. A little too abrasive. A little blind to her own vulnerabilities. And this is why Parker Posey, stuck cracking us up in the background as Lex's girl, should have been cast in the role. It's the first thing my friend and I said to each other when we were exiting the theater. 'Why wasn't Parker Lois instead?' In the new film the feisty Lois gets shut up tight inside of Kate Bosworth's soft, lovely, brokenhearted damsel in distress. Lois is still the teensiest bit mouthy but she's far more generically 'the girl who is waiting for her man to save her.' The way I see it, the real Superman would never have been able to pick her out of a crowd.

[For more discussion of this same issue, there's a good conversation going on over @ Cinemarati. -ed]

tags: Kate Bosworth, movies, cinema, comic books, Bryan Singer, Parker Posey, Superman, films, Superman Returns